Every day it seems I get direct messages from people on Twitter that say incredibly shocking things like,
“OMG I can’t believe they filmed you doing this!”
“Someone is spreading nasty rumours about you”
“This person is making up dreadful posts that are about you”
“What exactly are you doing in this movie?”
Contrary to popular belief, my life is not that exciting as these DMs might suggest. I'm actually quite well-behaved.
The wording changes from time to time, but you get the idea. It’s a shock message, and supposedly, it’s about YOU. The messages always include some sort of a link. Because you know, it’s the link to show you the nasty rumour / compromising video etc. that’s all about you, right?
Wrong. Please don’t click on the links in the messages. Ever.
There’s nothing new about these spammy DMs - they’ve been around for ages but the thing is, they continue to grow and grow like the nasty virus that they are because people keep clicking on the links.
If you click on the link, you get redirected over to a site that tricks you into thinking you’ve been logged out of Twitter, or that your session has expired, so therefore you must log in again. Which you do.
SURPRISE! It’s a fake site and you just gave them your Twitter name and password.
(smacks hand to forehead)
Then the virus will continue on the chain of shock DMs, only they’ll be sending them from your account. Shortly after that, you’ll be getting some emails from friends that truly DO care about what you’ve done to let you know they’re getting spam from your Twitter account.
That’s the type of Twitter DM you need to pay attention to.
If you find that this has happened to you, reset your Twitter password right away and check what applications have access to your Twitter account. I can’t stress enough how important it is to routinely do this simple thing.
Then it’s totally up to you to send out a tweet that says something like, “I swear to gawd, I was HACKED and did not do or see anything that my DM said I did! #Innocent"
Oh spam, you used to be such a fun word....
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